Jonny Dymond
BBC royal correspondent

A horrible picture is being drawn – of Meghan torn apart by the coverage of her, having suicidal thoughts - and of the Palace having learnt nothing in the 40 years since Diana.

Again, worth noting that this is only one side of the story.

Oprah asks the duchess: "How do you feel about the palace hearing you speak your truth today?"

Meghan says she's not going to live her life in fear.

"I don't know how they could expect that, after all of this time, we would still just be silent if there is an active role that the Firm is playing in perpetuating falsehoods about us," she says.

"That at a certain point you're gonna go: you guys, someone just tell the truth."

She adds: "And if that comes with risk of losing things, I mean... there is a lot that has been lost already.

"I mean, I've lost my father, I lost a baby, [I] nearly lost my name. I mean, there's the loss of identity. But I'm still standing."

Image source, EPA

Image source, Getty Images

Meghan says she feels "haunted" by a photograph from an official event she attended with Harry at the Royal Albert Hall while she was pregnant.

"Right before we had to leave for that [event], I had just had that conversation with Harry that morning," Meghan says.

Oprah asks: "That you don't want to be alive any more?"

"Yeah," Meghan confirmed.

She says she attended the event with Harry that night because she felt she could not be "left alone" and recalled Harry gripping her hand tightly while in attendance at the Royal Albert Hall.

Becoming visibly emotional while talking to Oprah, Meghan describes "weeping" every time the lights went down during the performance.

Oprah asks Meghan whether she thought about going to a hospital.

"You can't just do that. I couldn't, you know, call an Uber [to] the Palace," she says.

She says her passport, driver's license and keys were "turned over" when she became part of the family.

She adds she reached out to one of Princess Diana's best friends for help.

Oprah asks Meghan about her past comments, including when she described the experience as "almost unsurvivable".

"’Almost unsurvivable’ sounds like there was a breaking point,” Oprah says.

"I just didn't want to be alive anymore," Meghan replies, saying she was "ashamed" to admit it to Harry because of how much "loss he's suffered".

"That was a real and frightening, constant thought," she says.

Meghan says she sought help from the "institution", asking to go somewhere to get help - but the request was denied.

"This was emails and begging for help... but nothing was ever done," she says.

"Were you having suicidal thoughts?" Oprah asks.

“Yes, this was very, very clear. Very clear and very scary,” Meghan replies. “And you know, I didn't know who to even turn to in that.”

If you want to talk to someone about the issues raised in this piece, you can call the USNational Suicide Prevention Lifelineon1-800-273-TALK (8255) or contact the Crisis Text Line by texting TALK to 741741.

You can call the UK Samaritans Helpline on 116 123 or visit samaritans.org.

Oprah asks whether there was concern that it would "be a problem" if the baby were "too brown".

Meghan says: "I wasn't able to follow up with why, but if that's the assumption you're making, I think that feels like a pretty safe one. Which is really hard to understand."

Here is the moment that has dominated headlines and prompted so much reaction today...

Oprah asks Meghan why she thinks the Royal Family didn't want to make her son, Archie, a prince.

"Do you think it's because of his race?” she asks. “I know that's a loaded question.”

Meghan says: "In those months when I was pregnant, all around this same time, so we have, in tandem, the conversation of he won't be given security, he's not going to be given a title, and also concerns and conversations about how dark his skin might be when he was born."

Oprah asks her who said that.

Meghan doesn't answer, and Oprah asks again. "There are several conversations about it," says Meghan. The conversation was with Harry, she says, and about how dark the baby was going to be "potentially - and what that would mean or look like".

She doesn’t say who it was. "I think that would be very damaging to them," she says.

Meghan adds: "That was relayed to me from Harry. Those were conversations that family had with him. And I think it was really hard to be able to see those as compartmentalised conversations."

Image source, EPA

Meghan is asked by Oprah about baby Archie - who was not made a prince at his birth.

She says she found the news "really hard" - not because she wanted the title but because it meant he wouldn't receive security.

"All the grandeur surrounding this stuff is an attachment I don't personally have, right?” she says.

"The most important title I will ever have is 'mom'. But the idea of our son not being safe and also the idea of the first member of colour in this family not being titled in the same way that other grandchildren would be..."

She says the convention, meaning her children would be princes or princesses, was changed while she was pregnant.

"It's not their right to take it away... While I was pregnant they said they want to change the convention for Archie. Well, why?"

She says the news reports suggesting the lack of title was her and Harry's decision were wrong.

Image source, Reuters

In response to Oprah asking her whether she was "silent" or "silenced", Meghan says it was the latter.

Meghan says that everyone in her world was given a "very clear directive" to always give no comment from the moment it became publicly known that she and Harry were dating.

She said that she initially thought that she was "being protected" - but that soon changed.

"That was really hard to reconcile because it was only once we were married and everything started to really worsen that I came to understand that not only was I not being protected - but that they were willing to lie to protect other members of the family,” she says.

"But they weren't willing to tell the truth to protect me and my husband."

Jonny Dymond
BBC royal correspondent

A picture emerges of Meghan feeling desperately lonely and abandoned, denied the ability to go out and see her friends by a palace machinery that was concerned that she was all over the media – and driving other members of the Royal Family out of the newspaper coverage.

Image source, EPA/STR

Meghan talks more about being in the Royal Family, saying that she began to feel lonely after limits were put on the things she could do, for example not being able to go to lunch with her friends.

She says one of the "members of the family" asked her to lay low for a while, but Meghan says she hadn't left the house in months. "I'm everywhere but I am nowhere," she says.

She says at one point, she thought: "Right now I could not feel lonelier."

"I wasn't lonely with him," she says, meaning Prince Harry. "There were moments he had to work, he had to go away, there were moments in the middle of the night. There was very little I was allowed to do.

"Of course that breeds loneliness."

She compares losing her freedom to how people have felt during the past year because of the coronavirus lockdowns.

Image source, GETTY IMAGES

Meghan stresses the difference between the Royal Family and "the Firm" - the people and business around them.

"The Queen has always been wonderful to me," Meghan says. "I loved being in her company."

She recalls their first public appearance together in 2018, saying the Queen had given her pearl earrings and a matching necklace as a gift.

"She's always been warm and inviting and really welcoming," Meghan says.

Oprah asks if all members of the Royal Family did the same.

"I think everyone welcomed me," Meghan replies.

Jonny Dymond
BBC royal correspondent

As she speaks you realise – we’ve NEVER heard her speak at length before.

She seems relaxed, happy, relieved, even.

It’s worth remembering that in her few interventions as a working royal she has proved a brilliant communicator, with a very clear idea of what she wants to say and great understanding of how to get it across.

Image source, PA Media

Oprah asks Meghan what has excited her most about her life in California.

Meghan says it is "being able to live authentically".

"It's so basic, but it is really fulfilling," she says. "Just getting back down to basics."

Meghan tells Oprah that she and Harry exchanged vows three days before their wedding in May 2018.

"No-one knows that but we called the Archbishop [of Canterbury] and we just said 'this thing, this spectacle is for the world but we want our union between us'."

Image source, Getty Images

Oprah asks whether Meghan thinks the press had a standard for Kate and a different one for her.

The chat show host highlights some of the news stories published about Kate compared to Meghan, for example Kate eating avocados to help with morning sickness but in the story about Meghan, avocados were described as a fruit linked to deforestation.

"I don't know why, I can see now what layers were at play there. And again they really seemed to want a narrative of a hero and a villain," she says.

Oprah points out that she was the first mixed-race person to marry into the family, as well as a divorcee and an independent woman. Did that concern her in being able to fit in?

"I thought about it because they made me think about it, right. But I think at the same time now upon reflection, thank God all of those things were true. Thank God I had that life experience. Thank God I had known the value of working."

Image source, Getty Images

Oprah asks Meghan about the onslaught of tabloid stories published about her.

The US broadcast star asks specifically about rumours that Meghan made Kate cry in a fight about flower girl dresses for her wedding to Harry.

This story marked a "turning point", Meghan responds, saying that the "reverse" was true.

"A few days before the wedding [Kate] was upset about the flower girl dresses and it made me cry," Meghan says, adding that she "hoped" Kate would have wanted the false stories corrected.

Kate later apologised, bringing flowers and a note to make amends.

"I'm not sharing that piece about Kate to be disparaging about her," Meghan says. "She's a good person."

Asked why she thought Kate hadn't set the record straight, Meghan says: "Good question.”

Image source, Getty Images

Meghan is asked about meeting the Queen - Harry's grandmother - for the first time. What was that like, was she worried?

She says "there wasn’t actually a huge formality” the first time she met the Queen.

The meeting happened, Meghan says, when she and Harry went to lunch where Prince Andrew lives.

"It turned out the Queen was finishing a church service there in Windsor," says Meghan.

She says Harry asked her whether she knew how to curtsy, and she responded with: "What?"

“I said: ‘But it's your grandmother.’ He goes: ‘It's the Queen.’” Meghan tells Oprah.

"I thought genuinely that that was what happens outside," she says, adding she thought it was "part of the fanfare" and that she "didn’t think that was what happened inside".

She and Harry then practised the curtsy. "Apparently I did a very deep curtsy," she says, adding: "I don't remember it."

Then she and the Queen "sat there and just chatted".

"Thank God I hadn't known a lot about the family," she adds. "Thank God I hadn't researched."

Image source, Getty Images

Oprah asks Meghan what her expectations were in joining the Royal Family.

Meghan insists she had never looked up her husband online during their "courtship". What she knew was what Harry told her, she says, adding that part of their “initial connection” was their shared passion for their “cause-driven” work.

But there was "no way” to understand what it meant to be a working royal, day to day, Meghan adds.

“I didn't romanticise any element of it. But I think as Americans, especially, what do you know about the Royals - it’s what you read in fairytales, right?,” she says.

“So it's easy to have an image of it that is so far from reality. And that's what was really tricky over those past few years is when the perception and the reality are two very different things. And you're being judged on the perception but you're living the reality of it. There's a complete misalignment and there's no way to explain that to people.”

Image source, Courtesy of Harpo Productions/CBS

Oprah starts the interview by commenting on Meghan's baby bump: "You look lovely, pregnant and lovely."

Meghan says they know whether they are having a boy or a girl - but will wait until Harry joins before sharing the news. Of course, as the interviewed has already aired in the US, we already know they're expecting a girl in the summer.

Meghan and Oprah then reminisce about the Sussexes' wedding day. Oprah describes feeling a "sense of magic" and that Meghan seemed to be "floating" down the aisle.

And while Meghan joins in with some joyful memories - such as listening to the song, Chapel of Love, on the morning of the wedding - she adds that she felt "this wasn't our day. This was the day that was planned for the world".

Image source, Reuters

The primetime sit-down between Oprah and the royal couple has begun in the UK, almost 24 hours since the CBS TV special aired in the US.

As we've been reporting, we know the couple speak to Oprah about a range of deeply personal topics including racism, mental health, their relationship with the media and Royal Family dynamics.

Stick with us for live updates of the much-anticipated interview, coming from ITV and the ITV Hub.